The Death Penalty Is Too Expensive

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1 Page 1 of 5 The Death Penalty Is Too Expensive. Michael Ross. Opposing Viewpoints: The Death Penalty. Paul A. Winters. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, From Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. The Death Penalty Is Too Expensive Table of Contents: Further Readings "A Voice from Death Row," America, February 11, 1995, Reprinted by permission of the author. Opponents of capital punishment contend that the costs of implementing death sentences exceed the costs of life imprisonment for criminals. In the following viewpoint, Michael Ross argues that the extra funds needed to investigate, prosecute, and appeal capital cases would be better spent on crime reduction efforts, including additional police officers and more prison cells. He maintains that the expensiveness of the death penalty is ruining the cash-starved justice system. Ross, whose 1987 death sentence was overturned on appeal, is awaiting resentencing in Somers Prison, Connecticut. As you read, consider the following questions: 1. According to Ross, how much more expensive are capital trials than noncapital trials in California? 2. What is the estimated cost for New Jersey to implement a death penalty statute, according to the author? "Why should I, an honest, hardworking taxpayer, have to pay to support a murderer for the rest of his natural life? Why not execute him and save society the cost of his keep?" Being on death row myself, I have heard this argument many times. I believe that it is time to bring a few facts to light. The death penalty in this country is not cheap. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that because "death is different," much higher levels of procedural safeguards are required by the Constitution before it can be imposed. What this means in practical terms is a lengthy, complex and extremely expensive process of litigation over a period of years in various state and Federal courts. In contrast, life sentences are much less complex, and often their appeals are not pursued beyond the state supreme court level. The Costs of a Capital Trial To begin with, it should be noted that the added expenses of a capital trial will be incurred whenever the death penalty is sought, regardless of the final outcome. Therefore, the true cost of the death penalty also includes all the added expenses of the trials in which the death penalty is sought but not achieved. And because around 30 percent of all death sentences are overturned by state and Federal appeal courts, the costs will have to be repeated in a single capital case far more often than when the death penalty is not sought. The death penalty consequently results in much greater expenditures than simple life imprisonment. The added complexity and expense begin well before the trial itself. The crime has to be investigated more thoroughly by both the prosecution, which must prove the existence of the aggravating factors needed to obtain the death sentence, and by the defense, which must be

2 Page 2 of 5 prepared to argue in mitigation of such a sentence. Evidence must be prepared as to the defendant's entire background, including childhood, mental and psychological conditions, family relations, employment history, prior arrests and convictions, medical history and much more. And because most capital defendants are indigent, the cost of preparing this evidence both for the state to obtain the death penalty and for the defense to avoid it will almost always be paid by the taxpayer. Pretrial proceedings in capital cases are numerous and complicated. Because there is a whole body of Eighth Amendment law pertaining specifically to them, lengthier pretrial motions must be heard by the court. The process of jury selection is also more complex and time-consuming because there are enhanced constitutional implications regarding pretrial publicity, racial prejudice and other areas of possible juror bias. In cases in which pretrial publicity has affected potential jurors, the considerable added expense of a change of venue must be incurred. In addition, jurors must be asked a complex series of questions designed to determine whether they are excludable for various reasons, such as unwillingness to impose a death sentence due to moral convictions. Other areas of considerable expense include the trial itself, which is divided into two phases one to determine guilt, the other to determine the sentence. This bifurcated arrangement makes capital trials longer than a typical non-capital trial. Then there is the appeals process, which is constitutionally mandated. Finally, let's not forget the cost of maintaining maximum security on death rows, the clemency hearings and the cost of the execution itself. The Costs of Death Compared to Imprisonment So what does all this come to? You may be surprised. California estimates that capital trials are six times more expensive than other, non-capital, murder trials. Each death penalty case costs at least $1 million to prosecute at both the trial and the appellate levels. Only two executions have been carried out in California since 1967, but it is believed that the cost to taxpayers has exceeded a billion dollars during the past eighteen years of legal and political battles over the death penalty issue itself. Florida, with its numerous executions, has spent $57.2 million wsince By comparison, the cost of keeping an inmate in prison for life, figured at forty years, has been estimated at $500,000. But Florida has spent at least $3.2 million for each prisoner executed. Georgia taxpayers were expected to pay a minimum of $15.7 million on defense counsel alone for death row prisoners in The average capital case takes up to 800 hours of lawyer time. The figure of $15.7 million did not include the cost of paying state prosecutors or the higher cost of keeping death row prisoners in prison. Texas estimates that a single death penalty case entails an average expenditure of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of keeping someone in a single cell at the highest security level for forty years. It can be argued, therefore, that the use of the death penalty results in an enormous diversion of funds from areas where they could be more effectively used. For example, New Jersey had to lay off more than 500 police officers in At the same time it was implementing a new death penalty statute that would cost an estimated $16 million per year, more than enough to rehire the same number of officers at a salary of $30,000 per year. In Florida, a 1990 mid-year budget cut of $45 million forced the Department of Corrections to implement the early release of over 3,000 inmates.

3 Page 3 of 5 In recent years, ten other states have also reported the early release of prisoners because of overcrowding and underfunding. Texas has no choice but to release inmates who, in some cases, have served only 20 percent of their sentences in order to make way for incoming prisoners. They need more prison space but cannot afford the expansion costs. On the other hand, in just one sixyear period, Texas spent $183.2 million on the death penalty. Illinois is a bit luckier, for it has built new prisons, but the money to open them is lacking. It does, however, have the money to maintain the country's fourth largest death row. The Diversion of Funds from Law Enforcement A number of judges, prosecutors and other law enforcement officials oppose the death penalty on precisely the ground of cost, believing that the enormous concentration of judicial services on a handful of cases (many of which will ultimately result in life imprisonment) needlessly diverts increasingly scarce resources from other areas of law enforcement. In Sierra County, California, the local government was forced to cut police services in 1988 to pick up the tab for pursuing death penalty prosecutions. The County's District Attorney, James Reichle, complained: "If we didn't have to pay $500,000 a pop for Sacramento's murders, I'd have an investigator and the sheriff would have a couple of extra deputies and we could do some lasting good for Sierra County law enforcement." Dallas County District Attorney Norman Kinne also expressed his frustration at the high cost of capital punishment prosecutions in Texas: "Though I'm a firm believer in the death penalty, I also understand what the cost is. If you can be satisfied with putting a person in the penitentiary for the rest of his life... I think maybe we have to be satisfied with that as opposed to spending $1 million to try and get them executed... I think we could use [the money] better for additional penitentiary space, rehabilitation efforts, drug rehabilitation, education [and] especially devote a lot of attention to juveniles." And the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, James Exum, stated: "I think those of us involved in prosecuting these [death penalty] cases have this uneasy notion that... these cases are very time-consuming and very troublesome and take a lot of resources that might be better spent on other kinds of crimes..." Capital Punishment Is Not a Solution to Crime Our politicians often leap at the chance that the death penalty gives them to sound tough on crime. But what they are really doing is playing on the feelings of anxiety, frustration and anger that most people feel toward the seemingly uncontrollable plague of crime that our country is currently experiencing. They offer capital punishment as a solution, while at the same time more effective services to the community are being sacrificed. The public should not be fooled by such political rhetoric. There are programs that do work to reduce crime, but the resources to pay for such programs are often being diverted into capital punishment costs. Politicians should be working on genuine solutions to crime prevention and control. And the public needs to realize that being sensible about crime is not the same thing as being soft on crime. The situation was perhaps best summed up by retired Chief Justice John Dixon of the Louisiana Supreme Court, when he said: "The people have a constitutional right to the death penalty and we'll do our best to make it work rationally. But you can see what it's doing. Capital punishment is destroying the system." I am currently on Connecticut's death row. Perhaps the people of this state have no objection to paying through the nose for this brand of justice I readily admit to having no objections to running up the cost. But consider this: I am already behind bars and no longer a threat to society, but every dollar spent to assure my death (or anyone else's for that matter) means a dollar less

4 Page 4 of 5 toward the funding of more police, more prison cells, neighborhood watch programs or toward any of the other programs aimed at reducing crime. FURTHER READINGS Books Mumia Abu-Jamal. Live from Death Row. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Punishment and the Death Penalty: The Current Debate. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, Walter Berns. For Capital Punishment: Crime and the Morality of the Death Penalty. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Mark Brandler. The Death Penalty View from the Bench: An Autobiography. New York: Vantage, Committee on the Judiciary. Innocence and the Death Penalty: Assessing the Danger of Mistaken Executions. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, Randall Coyne and Lyn Entzeroth. Capital Punishment and the Judicial Process. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, Shirley Dicks. Young Blood: Juvenile Justice and the Death Penalty. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, Richard C. Dieter. The Future of the Death Penalty in the United States: A Texas-Sized Crisis. Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center, Gary E. Goldhammer. Dead End. Brunswick, ME: Briddle, Enid Harlow et al., eds. The Machinery of Death: A Shocking Indictment of Capital Punishment in the United States. New York: Amnesty International, Wendy Lesser. Pictures at an Execution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, James W. Marquart et al. The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, Austin: University of Texas Press, Kent S. Miller. Executing the Mentally Ill: The Criminal Justice System and the Case of Alvin Ford. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Raymond Paternoster. Capital Punishment in America. New York: Lexington Books, Emily F. Reed. The Penry Penalty: Capital Punishment and Offenders with Mental Retardation. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Eric W. Rise. The Martinville Seven: Race, Rape, and Capital Punishment. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, Gregory D. Russell. The Death Penalty and Racial Bias: Overturning Supreme Court Assumptions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, William Schaba. The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law. Cambridge: Grotius Publications, Stephen Trombley. The Execution Protocol: Inside America's Capital Punishment Industry. New York: Crown, Mark V. Tushnet. The Death Penalty. New York: Facts On File, David Von Drehle. Among the Lowest of the Dead: A Decade on Death Row. New York: Times Books, Periodicals Scott Burgins. "Jurors Ignore, Misunderstand Instructions," ABA Journal, May Available from 750 N. Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, IL David Cole. "Courting Capital Punishment," Nation, February 26, Commonweal. "What's the Rush?" June 5, Ruth Conniff. "Life or Death in Wisconsin," Progressive, May S.C. Gwynne. "Guilty, Innocent, Guilty," Time, January 16, Thomas Harvey Holt. "Death Penalty Poster Boy," National Review, June 22, Wendy Kaminer. "Let Them Die," Redbook, July David A. Kaplan. "Anger and Ambivalence," Newsweek, August 7, David A. Kaplan. "Catch-22 at the High Court," Newsweek, April 11, Michael Korengold. "Is There a Lawyer in the House?" Utne Reader, November/December Debra Cassens Moss. "Death, Habeas, and Good Lawyers: Balancing Fairness and Finality," ABA Journal,

5 Page 5 of 5 December Jeffrey Rosen. "Bad Noose," New Republic, October 4, Bruce Shapiro. "Not for Burning," Nation, July 17-24, John Tucker. "Dead End," New Republic, May 4, Sam Howe Verhovek. "Across the U.S., Executions Are Neither Swift nor Cheap," New York Times, February 22, Rebecca Westerfield. "The Death Penalty: Impending Challenges," Human Rights, Winter Available from 750 N. Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, IL Katherine van Wormer. "Those Who Seek Execution: Capital Punishment as a Form of Suicide," USA Today, March Source Citation: "The Death Penalty Is Too Expensive." Opposing Viewpoints: The Death Penalty. Paul A. Winters. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Tohickon Middle School. 26 Sep < &prodid=ovrc&docid=ej &source=gale&srcprod=ovrc&usergroupname=doyl78419 &version=1.0>. Gale Document Number: EJ Gale, Cengage Learning.

Joint Committee on Criminal Justice. Richard C. Dieter

Joint Committee on Criminal Justice Legislature of Massachusetts Boston, Massachusetts Testimony of Richard C. Dieter Executive Director Death Penalty Information Center "The Costs of the Death Penalty"